The advent of powerful computers made possible by technology advances in processor, data storage devices and memory, and together with higher network bandwidths facilitating the usage of Internet, has made computers an important part of modern day business. These advancements have led the path to the creation of important software applications where data is collected, organized and stored in relational databases. Subsequently, data from relational databases is mapped and populated to multidimensional databases where it is further organized in a multidimensional relationship manner.
The data in multidimensional databases can be defined and mapped along multiple dimensions. For example, the data in a sales multidimensional database may include dimensions for the different types of products, locations, customers, sales channels and time dimensions.
The ability to access and exploit data stored in these relational and/or multidimensional databases becomes an important aspect of businesses. As the types of data and volume increase, providing users with comprehensive and ‘easy to use’ navigation and visualization tools to make access, analysis and management of data from relational and/or multidimensional databases becomes increasingly important.
A goal of any information visualization system is to use computer graphics to utilize human perceptual processes and organize data in an informative and user-friendly manner. Thus, efforts have been made to develop tools for the display and visualization of data from relational and/or multidimensional databases.
Prior art navigation and visualization tools are too rigid in their presentation of data, and do not present a comprehensive view for the data that are being navigated and visualized. Furthermore, those traditional tools only allow users to design pre-defined, single path and single direction (one-way) navigation associated with ‘one click’ or command for the display and navigation of data from relational and/or multidimensional databases. Thus, the user may not be able to navigate through a relational and/or multidimensional database in a sequence of paths that fits the business requirements or the user's particular thought process.
There is thus a need for an improved computer-implemented method and system that provide multi-path and multi-level navigation for the display and visualization of data stored in relational and/or multidimensional databases.
There is another need for an improved computer-implemented method and system that provide users with a comprehensive graphical view of the data stored in a relational and/or multidimensional database, while the user navigates in a sequence of paths that fits the user's business requirements and thought process.
There is yet another need for an improved computer-implemented method and system that provide users with a comprehensive business intelligence system, while the user collaborates and communicates with respect to the information displayed from the relational and/or multidimensional databases.
There is still yet another need to provide an improved computer-implemented method and system for navigating and displaying data stored in relational and/or multidimensional databases, which is comprehensive and user-friendly.
The present invention provides such a method and system to meet the above four and other needs.